Various - Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 56, No. 346, August, 1844

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A Great Country's Little Wars . By HENRY LUSHINGTON. London: Parker, 1844.

" Heads ," we say, because it is one amongst the grievous neglects of the military writers, that they have made it impossible for us to describe the Affghan soldiery under any better representative term, by giving no circumstantial account of the arms or discipline prevailing through the Affghan forces, the tenure of their service, &c. Many had matchlocks; but many, we presume, had only swords; and artillery the Affghans had none, but what they had been suffered to steal in Cabool.

" Miserable Russian superstition ."—This is now, we believe, decaying. But why? Not from sounder politics, but from more accurate geography. The Affghan campaigns, with the affairs of Bokhara, of Khiva, and Khoondooz, have lighted up as with torches those worlds of wilderness and obstruction; so that, in any practical sense, people are ashamed now to talk of St Petersburg as threatening Delhi or Calcutta.

History of the War in Affghanistan . Brookes: London. 1843. We cite this work, as one of respectable appearance and composition; but unaccountably to us, from page 269 for a very considerable space, (in fact, from the outbreak of the Cabool insurrection to the end of General Elphinstone's retreat,) we find a literatim reprint of Lieutenant Eyre's work. How is that ?

But afterwards, at page 166, there is a dreadful insinuation that such a necessity might have founded itself on the danger of taking prisoners "in a camp already subsisting on half and quarter rations." Now we, in a paper on Casuistry, (long since published by this journal,) anticipated this shocking plea, contending that Napoleon's massacre of 4000 young Albanians at Jaffa, could draw no palliation from the alleged shortness of provisions, whether true or false; and on the ground that a civilized army, consciously under circumstances which will not allow it to take prisoners, has no right to proceed. Napoleon's condition had not changed from the time of leaving Cairo. We little expected to see a Jaffa plea urged, even hypothetically, for a British army.

" Dillecrout ."—This is the traditional dish of royalty at our English coronation banquet in Westminster Hall.

Smaller sum. —L.20,000 a-year. There was, however, a separate allowance, we believe, to Zemaun, the king's blind brother.